Small creative project: Trolley repainting with acrylic and chalk paint

I think that everyone saw the one and shiny turquoise trolley from Ikea that a lot of artists have. And of course, I did fall in love with it as well. But I just realised, it’s not for sale in our country anymore, and I did not find any used ones around… Luckily, as Im not now in the state of dealing with people anyway, haha.

Recently though, I found out that Action sells the same white trolley, and for a nice price. So, I went for it, with repainting on my mind. As it was a more spontaneous idea than a planned one, I went only for tools I could find in the same store, so I can start that day. 

Sadly, our local store didn’t have any spray paints I thought I would get, so I instead went with a classic, acrylic paint, for the green (olive Van Bleiswijck) and a blue chalk paint, without having any idea what it actually is. I didn’t even know what colours I wanted to use, but after seeing these two next to each other, I knew I needed these. Oh, and one no. 16 round brush.

I was really hyped to start, so I skipped any try to sand down anything and went straight for the painting stage. I used one full 250ml and ⅓ of a second one for the inner boxes. My brain can’t follow any plan, so instead of being smart and going layer by layer with whole boxes, I was running around all three of them and painting new layers on any spot that managed to get dry. The end of the first day looked really sad, and I was starting to panic a bit, imagining that I would need to scrap it all down and start over.

On the second day it got better, and around 3-5 layers, the color actually started to look consistent and I got back my confidence in what I’m doing.

Second shock was after opening the chalk color, as I thought it was acrylic as well. I was watching the consistency of the color, which is really watery, panicking again. But the color did stick pretty well, and I needed only three layers in most places for it to look consistent. The second day closed with rain, right after I managed to finish the last piece.

I picked up some matt primer/finisher for metallic objects as well, which I used under the blue color on pipes. I used it to seal all of the pieces. In the end, it’s not ideal, and I definitely did not use proper tools. But I like the result, and as long as I don’t scratch the color down, it’s usable. Yeah and don’t check it from below, I gave up on the boxes to make them pretty there. 

So – sometimes saying hell yeah to unplanned projects without obsessive researching before start is for sure a refreshing change. And I can’t wait to load it with all my art supply mess!